1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of data processing over data networks and, in particular, to a method, apparatus and system for improved content management and delivery.
2. Background Information
As computer technology has evolved, so too has the use of data networks to communicatively couple computer systems together enabling them to communicate with one another. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that data networks may be configured in a number of alternative network topologies, employing any number of alternative communication protocols. From small peer-to-peer networks, to local area networks (LAN), wide area networks (WAN) and enterprise networks (sometimes referred to as an intranet), to global data networks. One of the more popular of such global data networks is colloquially referred to as the Internet, an Internetworking of governmental, educational and commercial networks and servers throughout the world.
Once the domain of scholars and computer researchers, the introduction and acceptance of the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) associated with the World Wide Web (WWW) initiative effectively opened the Internet to anyone with an appropriately configured computer system. With the increased accessibility brought about with the WWW, data networks such as the Internet have evolved into a limitless collection of information for those with the computer savvy to access them.
One of the criticisms of the Internet, in particular, is that the wealth of information that is theoretically available on the Internet is not easily identified and retrieved by a typical user. Until recently, this difficulty in accessing the eclectic collection of information available on the Internet has not really been a problem, as many netizens.sup.1 rely on search engines and the like to locate information of interest. Simplistically speaking, search engines search the meta-tags and text of a number of web pages in an effort to identify the information of interest. Until recently, the use of such search engines has proven acceptable as a means of identifying information on the web. FNT * Those skilled in the art will appreciate that a new vocabulary has evolved to describe the evolving sociology of the Internet, wherein a netizen is a citizen on the Internet, i.e., an Internet user.
Recently, however, the Internet has evolved to support electronic commerce, sometimes referred to as e-commerce. Electronic commerce sites on, for example, the Internet are presented in the form of publicly accessible web pages which place the stock, availability and pricing information of their products online. A typical e-commerce site may be thought of as being comprised of at least two parts, a first part which is comprised of the HTML document to create the graphical user interface (GUI) on the Internet, and a second part comprised of a database housing the product information, i.e., stock/availability, and pricing information. The GUI front end provides the user with a means of searching for product information, stock or availability, and pricing by entering search terms or a query list, which is then used to access and retrieve the appropriate information from the database for display to the user. Accordingly, it typically requires at least two searches, often more, to identify the particular information of interest on the Internet. This makes it difficult, at best, for many netizens to find product information as it is often buried in databases hidden from search engines. One solution to make product information more readily accessible is to forego the product databases and have programmers generate HTML code for dedicated web pages for each product. One drawback of such a solution, however, is that substantial investments have been made to put together the current product databases. To simply forego using current product databases would be a costly solution, not to mention the substantial cost of generating dedicated web pages for each product. However, companies staking their commercial success on the e-commerce business paradigm will attest that the current difficulty conducting e-commerce is resulting in lost opportunity and unrealized profit for many e-commerce sites.
Thus, an improved method, apparatus and system for identifying, managing and delivering information content, e.g., product information, is required, unencumbered by the deficiencies and inherent limitations commonly associated with data networks and the network devices of the prior art. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art, from the description to follow, that the present invention achieves these and other desired results.